Is anything more fun than a time capsule? Well, OK, maybe one or two things, but I'm not sure if even Christmas stockings can top the opening of an old, buried box
to see what historical oddities were left behind. And then there's the flip side - the opportunity to contribute an oddity of one's own to a capsule that's about to be
stashed somewhere.
Part of the fun is not knowing what tricks time itself will play. Howbert Elementary, to its dismay, dug up its 25-year capsule last fall, only to find the seal broken and
everything ruined except a 1984 school T-shirt. And for Coronado's new capsule, it's interesting that if the "senior secret" isn't passed on to 2058, no one will know
the goodies hidden behind the cryptic "2008" plaque in the auditorium or even that the wall is to be bashed in to get them.
I'm personally stoked that copies of the Westside Pioneer have been placed into at least three time capsules on the Westside. One of them is the 100-year box the
Pikes Peak United Methodist Church placed in 2004, after the congregation opened the one that their predecessors had cemented into a cornerstone of the building
when it was brand new a century before. Another is in the 150-year container that the Old Colorado City Historical Society buried in the History Center courtyard
last year in honor of the sesquicentennial (150-year) anniversary of the founding of Colorado City. I think (but have never verified) that a Pioneer is in the 100-year
capsule that City Parks buried eight feet below the dirt at a secret location in Red Rock Canyon in 2005. And, if the hard-working Howbert Elementary staff ever
have some spare moments to bury a new 25-year capsule, we're to be in that one too.
In case you're wondering, it's not as if we run around asking to have our paper put in these boxes. In each of the above cases, we had written an article about the
occasion, and that's why it went in. What might future people think when they read the Pioneer? I can picture it now: "'Small-town Westside atmosphere'? What else
is new?"